How popular is the baby name Bernarr in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Bernarr.

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Popularity of the baby name Bernarr


Posts that mention the name Bernarr

What gave the baby name Rheta a boost in the 1930s?

Chicago murder victim Rheta G. Wynekoop (1910-1933)
Rheta G. Wynekoop

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Rheta saw an impressive spike in usage in the 1930s:

  • 1936: 37 baby girls named Rheta
  • 1935: 61 baby girls named Rheta
  • 1934: 151 baby girls named Rheta (peak usage)
  • 1933: 81 baby girls named Rheta
  • 1932: 20 baby girls named Rheta

Here’s a graph showing the sharp rise of Rheta in 1933 and 1934:

Popularity graph of the baby name Rheta in the U.S.
Usage of the baby name Rheta

(The spelling Rheata was also a one-hit wonder in 1934.)

So what caused this sudden interest in the name Rheta?

A murder in Chicago!

On November 21, 1933, the body of a 23-year-old woman named Rheta G. Wynekoop was found — chloroformed, partially undressed, and shot to death — on an operating table inside the office of respected female physician Alice Wynekoop, who also happened to be Rheta’s mother-in-law.

The office was located in the basement of Alice’s sizeable Chicago residence, which Alice shared with Rheta and her husband Earle (as well as with various boarders).

Rheta, a violinist originally from Indianapolis, had been married to Earle Wynekoop for four years.

On November 23, both Alice and Earle were arrested.

Earle — who didn’t have a job, but did have multiple paramours (several of whom were named in the newspapers) — confessed to committing the crime. Soon after, though, it was determined that he had an alibi. (He’d been on a trip to Kansas City with a friend at the time of the murder.)

His false confession was an attempt to protect his 62-year-old mother, who (he knew) had taken out a double indemnity life insurance policy on Rheta two weeks earlier.

Alice — despite having an annual income, and owning a large home — was sinking into debt.

Not only that, but at least four other family members and friends had died under Alice’s care, in her “gloomy mansion,” in recent years. Alice’s otherwise healthy husband Frank, for instance, died suddenly in 1929. (His estate was worth $75,000.) And Alice’s close friend Catherine Porter died in 1932. (Alice claimed all the money in their joint bank account, and also inherited Porter’s 100-acre farm.)

On November 25, Rheta Wynekoop’s funeral took place in Indianapolis.

Huge bronze and yellow chrysanthemums, which might have graced the beauty of Rheta Gardner Wynekoop on the concert stage, bowed their heads as if in sorrow this morning while more than 1,000 persons filed slowly past her casket.

On November 30, Dr. Alice Wynekoop was indicted.

Her first trial began on January 15, 1934. It was declared a mistrial four days later due to Alice’s poor health.

Her second trial began on February 19 and lasted more than two weeks.

In early March, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Alice was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of her daughter-in-law.

Soon after, the story of Rheta Wynekoop’s murder was recounted in various true crime magazines, such as Real Detective (in April) and Bernarr Macfadden‘s True Detective Mysteries (in May).

What are your thoughts on the name Rheta?

P.S. I have a hunch that this incident also inspired the cartoonist behind Mandrake the Magician to name one of his comic strip characters Rheeta in early 1935…

Sources:

Image: Clipping from the Brownsville Herald (26 Nov. 1933)

Baby name story: Konti

Actress Lenore Konti Bushman (sitting beside John Wayne) in the movie "Red River Range" (1938).
Lenore Konti Bushman in “Red River Range“

Hungarian sculptor Isidore Konti emigrated to the United States in the early 1890s. He became known for creating large-scale sculptures for international expositions, such as the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

Konti had a “fatherly interest in the welfare of the young artists around him,” and,

…in 1908 and 1909, he hired a destitute young actor, Francis X. Bushman, to model and assist around the studio, later encouraging “Bushie” to travel with a performing company. Konti regularly sent Bushman’s young wife and children money to live on, as he did Bushman himself. Early in 1909, the Bushmans named their new baby daughter “Konti.”

Francis X. Bushman — who was named after the Catholic saint Francis Xavier — went on to become one of the biggest silent film stars of the 1910s. He was billed as “the Handsomest Man in the World” and known for his physique. (He was a Bernarr Macfadden follower.)

He and his wife Josephine had five children — Ralph, Josephine, Virginia, Lenore, and Bruce — and Lenore’s middle name was indeed Konti.

Lenore went on to appear in a handful of films during the 1920s and ’30s. (In the image above, she’s sitting beside John Wayne.)

Sources:

P.S. Exposition-related baby names we’ve talked about include Eulalia, Louisiana Purchase, and Louis Francis.

How did “The Brighter Day” influence baby names?

brighter day, soap opera, 1950s, television
Babby, Grayling, and Patsy in 1954

The Brighter Day was a moderately popular soap opera that ran on radio from 1948 to 1956 and on television from 1954 to 1962.

The show featured the Dennis family, which was headed by widowed father Rev. Richard Dennis. His five children were adult daughters Elizabeth (Liz) and Althea, adult son Grayling, and teenage daughters Patricia (Patsy) and Barbara (Babby).

At least four Brighter Day characters influenced U.S. baby names:

Grayling

In a 1949 article, Grayling Dennis was described as “restless, charming, spoiled. He writes poetry, plays the violin, has a long string of girl friends who adore his flashing eyes and his wonderful tennis, and drinks too much. But none of these activities has helped Gray, at twenty-three, to “find himself.””

The show was radio-only at that time — listeners would hear Grayling’s name, but never see it — so it’s not surprising that a slew of spelling variants ended up as boy names in the baby name data.

The first of the group to debut was Graylin, in 1949. Grayling, Grayland, and Graylon appeared in 1950, followed by Graylan (’54), Graylyn (’55), Graylen (’56), and Greyling (’57).

GraylinGraylingGraylandGraylon
19601436109
19592761 [rank: 987th]1115
19582855186
19572858 [rank: 997th]1516
195625471912
19551638158
1954824146
1953111167
195288.6
195178.8
19501117*5*5*
19496*...
1948....
*Debut

The name Grayling reached the top 1000 twice in the late ’50s, but all variants saw decreased usage after the TV show was canceled in the early ’60s.

Althea

Dramatic daughter Althea dramatically boosted the usage of the name Althea in the late 1940s:

  • 1951: 334 baby girls named Althea (rank: 454th)
  • 1950: 309 baby girls named Althea (rank: 462nd)
  • 1949: 235 baby girls named Althea (rank: 545th)
  • 1948: 126 baby girls named Althea (rank: 761st)
  • 1947: 118 baby girls named Althea (rank: 803rd)

No doubt she was also behind the debut of the spelling Altheia in 1951.

Spring

In early 1951, Althea discovered she was pregnant. Althea was eager to become an movie actress, not a mother, and “regard[ed] the baby as an annoying interruption to her ambitions.” Regardless, she soon gave birth to a baby girl named Spring, and the baby name Spring debuted in the U.S. data the very same year:

  • 1959: 34 baby girls named Spring
  • 1958: 44 baby girls named Spring
  • 1957: 77 baby girls named Spring
  • 1956: 104 baby girls named Spring
  • 1955: 41 baby girls named Spring
  • 1954: 37 baby girls named Spring
  • 1953: 27 baby girls named Spring
  • 1952: 30 baby girls named Spring
  • 1951: 7 baby girls named Spring [debut]
  • 1950: unlisted

By July of 1952, Althea’s daughter Spring was already 4 years old (a victim of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome). I’m not sure how often Spring appeared in the show overall, but she may have been featured prominently in 1956, judging by the usage of the baby name that year.

Babby

In a 1954 article, Babby Dennis was described as “eager and impulsive.” She was the baby of the family, and her nickname was consistently spelled with a “y” to reflect this fact.

But TV audiences clearly preferred the spelling Babbie, which debuted in 1956 — years before Babby and Babbi finally showed up:

Girls named BabbieGirls named BabbyGirls named Babbi
1963...
196285.
1961189.
196020156
1959195*6*
19588..
19588..
19575..
195610*..
1955...
*Debut

By 1959, Babby was a young adult and involved in a romance with a gangster named Peter Nino. (Despite being a gangster, Nino was popular with TV audiences: “Nino was to be killed off in six months, but fan mail gave him a reprieve.”)

Sources:

P.S. Three of the sources above refer to a single magazine that went through a bunch of name changes over the course of its existence (1930s to 1970s). The publisher was Macfadden, founded by Bernarr Macfadden, who knew a bit about name changes himself…

Babies named for the book “A Traveler from Altruria”

Cosmopolitan Magazine (April, 1893)

The names Dorcasina, Malaeska, and Trilby were inspired by characters from 19th-century novels. Altruria also comes from a 19th-century novel, but not from a character.

The story A Traveler from Altruria by W. D. (William Dean) Howells was first published in installments in Cosmopolitan magazine from November 1892 to October 1893. It was published as standalone book in 1894.

The story’s protagonist is Aristides Homos, a visitor to America from the fictional island of Altruria, “a Utopian world that combined the foundations of Christianity and the U.S. Constitution to produce an “ethical socialism” by which society was guided.”

The fictional place-name Altruria is a play on the word “altruism,” which was coined relatively recently (circa 1830) by French philosopher Auguste Comte.

Though A Traveler from Altruria isn’t well-remembered today, it was influential during the 1890s. Altrurian Clubs started sprouting up across the country. A short-lived commune called Altruria was established in Sonoma County, California, in the mid-1890s. And at least two babies were given the (middle) name Altruria:

  • Carrie Altruria Evans, born in 1900 in Van Wert, Ohio
  • Lester Altruria Eby, born in 1895 in Des Moines, Iowa

The official history book of the Van Wert Altrurian Club even mentions Carrie by name:

Carrie Altruria Evans, born 1900 in Ohio
Carrie Altruria Evans, b. 1900

What do you think of Altruria as a baby name? Do you think it could be an alternative to the fast-rising Aurora (which broke into the top 100 last year)?

Sources: